Sea Dogs and Skippers

Melvin Baker is an archivist and historian at Memorial University of
Newfoundland, and the co-editor of Dictionary of Newfoundland and
Labrador Biography.

Sea Dogs and Skippers is one of the better books to be published on
Newfoundland’s storied and varied history of shipwrecks. The anthology
consists of 16 articles by 14 authors, and covers the period from the
early 1800s to the present. The length of the articles varies greatly,
from approximately three pages to 47. Some articles are based on
contemporary newspaper accounts of a particular ship disaster, and
several stand out for their authors’ ability to make a story
compelling. Of particular note is Shannon Ryan’s account of his
interview with Andy Short, in which Short provides a frightening
description of being shipwrecked off Newfoundland in the mid-1920s and
ending up in Barbados.